Link building is an essential part of any digital marketing strategy. It is especially important for startups with new websites who need to build website authority so that they can rank higher on search engines and increase their traffic.
A strong link building strategy complimenting content marketing efforts can help you increase your return on investment and speed up the growth of organic traffic to your website.
But what really is link building? And why is it so important for your success in a digital world?
Let’s look at the definition and top nine link building benefits for you to get a clearer idea.
What is link building?
Link building is the process by which you get links to your website from other reputable websites on the internet. By building high-quality links to your website, you can increase your website’s domain authority and increase your chances of ranking higher on search results.
While there are various ways of building links for your website, you need to keep in mind that these need to be quality links and should have a natural link to the content on your website.
Getting higher-quality links is more important than the number of links. But how can you get these quality links for your website?
The best ways include guest posting, submitting a quote to an industry-related article, asking to be added to a roundup relevant to your industry, and reaching out to website owners and asking them if they would be willing to link to a relevant post on your website.
Ideally, a good link building strategy will aim to build links using all the techniques mentioned above.
9 link building benefits for startups
Now that you know what link building really is and the different link building strategies that can be used to build quality links for your website, let’s look at nine ways in which link building benefits your website:
Boosts website traffic
One of the biggest benefits of link building is that it can improve your website traffic. And who doesn’t want more website traffic right?
There are two main reasons why your website traffic stands to improve from such a strong link building strategy.
The first reason is that the readers from the third-party websites linking to your website will click on the link and be redirected to your website, increasing your traffic.
The other reason for increased traffic through link building is that links from reputable websites improve your domain authority and help you rank higher in search engines, which is the best way to boost organic traffic.
Improves Search Rankings
As mentioned above, one of the ways link building strategies can help you increase traffic is by higher ranking on search engines.
This is mainly because with every relevant site with a high domain authority linking to your website, it signals to search engines that your website is credible, trustworthy, and an authority on the subject. This is what Google and other search engines use when ranking websites.
For example, you are a travel agency, and having links from other reputable travel websites like travelandleisure.com or from other smaller travel blogs can help improve your search rankings significantly over time.
Higher SEO scores and site metrics
A strong link building strategy can help your website gain higher scores and site metrics and improve search engine optimization scores. This is one of the most important benefits of link building.
These metrics help signal to Google and other search engines the quality of your website and your content, which in turn can help you rank higher. Some of the site metrics include the following:
- Domain Rating (DR): This is Ahrefs’ domain rating tool that is based specifically on the backlinks your website has garnered. Ahrefs has revealed that the domain rating is awarded based on the domain rating of the website linking to your website. When a domain’s DR is higher, more ‘link juice’ is transferred to linked domains.
Basically, the rating of the source domain is divided equally amongst the different domains it links to, creating a chain of credibility.
Based on this, a website with DR-10 that links to only three other domains will be more valuable for you than a website with a DR-80 that links to thousands of other domains.
- URL Rating (UR): URL rating is another important metric for search engine optimization. It is another Ahrefs metric that is a page-level ranking. This means that the ranking varies for each page on your website, as opposed to the website as a whole. A 100-point scale is used for URL ranking and the higher the score, the better the linking profile is for that particular page. This is also an important metric that can help you rank higher and faster for certain keywords.
- PageRank (PR): PageRank is one of the most important metrics used by Google Search’s algorithm to rank pages for the search results. It takes into account both the quantity and quality of links in order to determine the importance of the page. This calculation is what helps pages get higher positions in search engine results.
Increases credibility and improves reputation
Let’s go back to the example we used above of the travel agency that gets quality links from reputable websites like travelandleisure.com and other travel blogs in the niche.
If you are a reader of these linking websites like travelandleisure.com, you are more likely to trust the website they are linking to and recommending.
This can improve your credibility and reputation on the internet, not just with search engines, but with actual readers of the website linking to your business. It also highlights the need to obtain links from quality, relevant websites in your niche.
Improves visibility and exposure
Visibility and exposure are good for any business. It can help you gain more potential customers, improve your brand name and visibility and increase your reach. By using a targeted link building strategy, you can make or break your digital marketing strategy as a whole.
How so, you may be wondering? Well, links can help you increase the visibility of your brand and introduce your website to the right kind of audience.
Taking into consideration the example we have been using above, as a travel agency, getting a link from travelandleisure.com does not just mean more visibility and exposure, it means the right kind of visibility and exposure.
The audience who reads travelandleisure.com is surely the kind that likes to travel and so they have a higher chance of converting into actual paying customers.
Lowers bounce rates
Another important link building benefit is that it can help reduce your bounce rates. Bounce rates refer to the percentage of your website users who only visit a single URL on your site before clicking away to another site or closing their tab.
And for reducing bounce rate, the second part of your link building strategy is what comes into play. This includes creating an internal linking structure within your own website. What this does is that it keeps your readers interested and leads them to other pages on your website that they might find interesting.
When your reader clicks on a link to a page within your own website, it helps you lower your bounce rate and signals to search engines that your website is interesting for users.
Let’s look at an example to understand this better. Your travel agency blog has various travel guides to different destinations you offer tours to. One such post is a detailed travel guide on the top places to visit in Italy.
This blog post rounds up ten top Italian destinations for tourists. Adding links to individual guides for each of those destinations can help keep your audience on your website longer and reduce your bounce rate.
Increases sales and revenue generation opportunities
An important benefit of link building you need to consider is that it can help you increase sales and revenue generation opportunities.
Every time your website gets a link from a relevant, reputable website in your niche, you increase your brand visibility and reach and in turn also improve your website traffic and brand credibility.
With each link, you are introducing your business to newer audiences and encouraging them to check out your website and your business. This results in increased website visits and improves your chances of making sales and expanding your revenue generation opportunities.
With higher website traffic, you can also explore displaying advertisements on your website or using affiliate links for products you recommend and create additional sources of income for your business.
Helps you add more value for your readers
You need to consider that by adding relevant inbound and outbound links, you add more value for your readers. When you add more value for your readers, you increase engagement and gain their trust and loyalty.
This is one of the greatest link building benefits as it ensures that your readers keep coming back to your website and also increases the chances of them purchasing from you.
By creating a strong link building strategy, you can help supplement your content with additional valuable information by linking to relevant blog posts, tools, and other resources that can add value to your readers.
For example, you write a blog post on ‘content marketing’ for your digital marketing agency website. Throughout the blog post, you strategically link to various resources on link building, tools like BuzzSumo and Answer The Public and provide your readers with complete information. This can help add value to your readers and gain their loyalty.
Improves your website’s trust score
Trust scores are also commonly known as TrustRank, Authority Score, and MozTrust. These trust scores signal to Google and other search engines that your content can be trusted and that your website is trustworthy and not a spammy website.
Based on your trust score, search engines will be alerted that your website provides value, expertise, and well, trustworthy content to visitors.
Link building strategy 101
You need to have a link building strategy without a doubt. Link building can become very challenging and time consuming task if you don’t really know what you are trying to do. Now, let’s take a look at it from the beginning in a very easy explanation.
Link building is basically getting other websites to mention you on their website and linking back to yours.
Sounds easy, doesn’t it? Well, you need to aim to building backlinks from quality sites, not just any site. The higher the authority of a website is, the more quality backlink you get. As an example, let’s assume you are a B2B service provider.
Therefore, your link building efforts might be slightly different than for other businesses. In your case, ideal way would be to get inbound links from high authority site. This can be achieved by them reviewing your business, as well as several others.
In conclusion, you will get referral traffic from their website (let’s assume they have high organic traffic on their website), permanent link that will improve your domain authority and improve your search engine results pages.
The whole process is fairly straightforward if you get a hang of it. In case you don’t, I highly recommend getting an internal link building specialist / outreach specialist or high an external link building agency to do it for you and save you lots of time.
Need assistance with link building?
Link building is an ongoing and tedious process, but ignoring it can be extremely foolish, especially if you are a startup.
The most efficient way to build your links and gain all the benefits of link building is to outsource the job to specialized agencies. Schedule a call with Soar and learn about our various link building packages, so you can optimize your website and start ranking quickly.